I had my rear tyres replaced as they were low and although the car drove perfectly straight with no vibrations or uneven wear, I had a wheel alignment done.

They showed me that the front was out of alignment and changed it all to green, great I thought.

I took it for a drive and straight away noticed the car pulling to the left and to make it worse, at 50mph there's a vibration.

I took it back and they claimed to rebalance the wheels, and redo the alignment but it's still the same.

The guy was saying that it's probably something to do with one of the front wheels and that I should swap the front wheels over.
- the front tyres were replaced not even 500miles ago.

I was tempted to tell them to put the back to the red settings to see if it resolved it, but surely red would be wrong?

 

A good 4x4 alignment will match values each side, rather than simply get in the green zone, which is fine for the family run around.
Your man there has actually made the matching worse in some aspects, and the toe is more than I would want. This isn't an alignment that I would pay for at all; however it costs to find a perfectionist.
edit rear toe probably causing vibes? Normally youd have zero toe front and rear, or just a tiny amount depending on driving style

 

First thing you do is swap the wheels left to right to see if changes the pull direction.

I don't care they've done 500miles a faulty tyre can occur at any time and visually look fine.


Wheel or hub run-out will also give inaccurate alignment readings which means any wheel alignment measurement will be wrong. Job for the dial gauge. But swapping wheels across front/rear axles and rechecking alignment is an option.

A faulty tyre can cause the car to pull to one side. As well as random vibrations that rebalancing never really fixes (or it returns and disappears at random).

I recently had to deal with the latter... £250 tyre that looks perfect, but internally faulty causing the car to pull to the left. swapped left to right, car pulled to the right instead. Oddly it happened immediate after using the Eurotunnel and no I didn't bash the curbs in the train!

 

Some shower thoughts on wheel balancing: Look at wheel weights position on the wheels. If the weights are grouped together on each side of the wheel. Fine. BUT if there are multiple groups of weights on each side (eg. 30grams on inner then another 30grams on the inner 90degrees away), then its not been balanced as well as it could be (called counter balancing). It does work for most but on sensitive cars you can get shimmy at 80mph.

Usually it's a tell tale of if someone rushed the balancing as if the balance machine asks for more weights after spinning it's better to remove the previous weight and place the new weight inbetween the old weight position and new weight position. Can be a faff and wasteful on sticky weights on a bad day.

And as another rough rule of thumb, if there's more than 80grams of weights on one wheel (excluding shopping cars, cars with banged up rims, Chinese/Budget tyres, off-roaders and vans etc.), then it's not going to stay balanced, Over 100grams I'd be breaking the bead and spinning the tyre 90degrees to see if that helps.

Also worth noting with new tyres the balance can shift a little after a few 100miles. Probably more if the wheel has spun inside the tyre if the tyre soap/lube is a bit too slippy.

 

Vibrations I've had from previous cars were resolved using a Hunter Road Force balancing machine, I highly recommend it and only use that nowadays.

 

I took the car back, they had it all day, rebalanced the wheels and it feels mornal again.

thank god.

 

in general the actual equipment makes little difference its the "monkey" using it...........